Notice of GM

VERONA PHARMA PLC - Notice of GM

PR Newswire

London, June 30

Verona Pharma plc

("Verona Pharma" or the "Company")

Confirmation of General Meeting Date

1 July 2016, Cardiff – Verona Pharma plc (AIM: VRP), the drug development company focused on first-in-class medicines to treat respiratory diseases, confirms that, further to the Notice of Meeting contained within the Circular posted to Shareholders on 17 June 2016 in relation to the Proposed Placing, the General Meeting of the Company will be held at 11.00 a.m. on 22 July 2016 at the offices of Shakespeare Martineau LLP whose address as of 18 July 2016 is Allianz House, 6th Floor, 60 Gracechurch Street, London, EC3V 0HR.

Capitalised terms in this announcement have the same meaning as in the Circular being published in conjunction with the proposed placing.

The expected timetable of principal events remains as previously stated, namely:

Notes:

(1) References to times are to London time (unless otherwise stated).

(2) If any of the above times or dates should change, the revised times and/or dates will be notified by an announcement to an RIS and otherwise communicated to Placees.

(3) Certain of the events in the above timetable are conditional upon, amongst other things, the approval of the Resolutions to be proposed at the General Meeting.

(4) The Warrants will not be separately admitted to trading on AIM, but the Warrant Shares which will arise following any valid exercise of Warrants will be admitted to trading in due course as part of the single class of shares admitted to trading on AIM.

-Ends-

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Notes to Editors

About Verona Pharma plc

Verona Pharma plc is a UK-based clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of innovative prescription medicines to treat respiratory diseases with significant unmet medical needs, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma and cystic fibrosis. 

Verona Pharma's lead drug, RPL554, is a first-in-class drug currently in phase II trials as a nebulised treatment for acute exacerbations of COPD in the hospital setting. The drug is a dual phosphodiesterase (PDE) 3/4 inhibitor and therefore has both bronchodilator and anti-inflammatory effects, which are essential to the improvement of patients with COPD and asthma. 

Verona Pharma is also building a broader portfolio of RPL554-containing products to maximise its benefit to patients and its value. This includes the very significant markets for COPD and asthma maintenance therapy. The Company is also exploring the potential of the drug in different diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, where it is in pre-clinical testing and has recently received a Venture and Innovation Award from the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

About Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Sixty-five million people worldwide suffer from moderate to severe COPD and the World Health Organisation (WHO) expects COPD to be the 3rd leading cause of death globally by 2020. It is the only major chronic disease with increasing mortality. Currently available drugs are aimed at long-term maintenance therapy, with the market dominated by large pharma. Despite the wide availability of these therapies, COPD patients suffer acute periods of worsening symptoms (exacerbations), which cause, in the US alone, some 1.5 million A&E visits, 726,000 hospitalisations and 120,000 deaths per annum.

Bronchodilating therapy is considered to be the standard of care, and agents can be administered via handheld devices such as metered dose inhaler (MDI), dry powder inhaler (DPI) and by nebulisers. The nebulised bronchodilator market was worth about $1 billion in 2014 in the US.1 RPL554 is being developed by Verona Pharma as an add-on therapy to the “Standard of Care” with the objectives of providing rapid and pronounced improvement in lung function, reduced symptoms and both shortened duration of hospital stays and reduced re-admission rates 30 days after discharge from hospital. Studies to date on RPL554 have demonstrated that it has a strongly differentiated 3-way mode of action, being: (1) bronchodilation (the relaxation of smooth muscle in the airway); (2) anti-inflammatory effects on cells and (3) ion channel activation in epithelial cells, with increased mucociliary clearance of the airway.

1 IMS Consulting Group market research 2014